CHAP. XVI. THE MIDLAND RAILWAY. 333 



kingdoms of France and Italy ; while Stephenson's 

 railway was formed in about three years, by a com- 

 pany of private merchants and capitalists out of their 

 own funds, and under their own superintendence. 



It is scarcely necessary that we should give any 

 account in detail of the North Midland works. The 

 making of one tunnel so much resembles the making of 

 another, the building of bridges and viaducts, no 

 matter how extensive, so much resembles the building 

 of others, the cutting out of " dirt," the blasting of 

 rocks, and the wheeling of excavation into embank- 

 ments, is so much a matter of mere time and hard work, 

 that it is quite unnecessary for us to detain the reader 

 by any attempt at their description. Of course there 

 were the usual difficulties to encounter and overcome, 

 but the railway engineer regarded these as mere matters 

 of course, and would probably have been disappointed if 

 they had not presented themselves, On the Midland, as 

 on other lines, water was the great enemy to be fought 

 against, water in the Claycross and other tunnels, 

 water in the boggy or sandy foundations of bridges, 

 and water in cuttings and embankments. As an illus- 

 tration of the difficulties of bridge building, we may 

 mention the case of the five arch bridge over the Derwent, 

 where it took two years' work, night and day, to get in 

 the foundations of the piers alone. Another curious 

 illustration of the mischief done by water in cuttings 

 may be briefly mentioned. At a part of the North 

 Midland Line, near Ambergate, it was necessary to pass 

 along a hillside in a cutting a few yards deep. As the 

 cutting proceeded, a seam of shale was cut across, lying 

 at an inclination of 6 to 1 ; and shortly after, the water 

 getting behind the bed of shale, the whole mass of 

 earth along the hill above began to move down across 

 the line of excavation. The accident completely upset 

 the estimates of the contractor, who, instead of fifty 

 thousand cubic yards, found that he had about five 

 hundred thousand to remove ; the execution of this 



